WP-PhpBB Bridge: special characters in username (4 posts)

I saw that nickname was protected by an ereg_replace.
If I use a simply htmlspecialchars I must deactive the plugin before and the re-active it? I had worked only on MyBB and with wordpress I'm a little bit scared :)
This is the site: http://ficw.altervista.org

I did it, but it is not changed.
The username in PhpBB for example is: [ex]hello ; [ex]hello1 and in WP is: exhello and exhello1
The same happens to uppercase, changed in lowercase, for example: [ex]Luca in exluca